Sarah Ash on In Her Defence Bunch Courtney Investigation #2 @bunchcourtney00 @penkhullpress #crimefiction

In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigation #2 – Jan Edwards

In Her Defence : Bunch Courtney Investigation #2 takes place in the depths of the Sussex countryside during May of 1940. Rose ‘Bunch’ Courtney is once again a thorn in the side of Detective Chief Inspector William Wright in his duties with the Sussex Constabulary as they investigate a series of apparently random deaths.

Many writers will say that they know their main characters as well as any real person and I do have a huge affection for Rose ‘Bunch’ Courtney and Detective Chief Inspector William Wright. Knowing them as well as I do, one of the hardest things has been knowing how much of their background to retell in books one and two. You want new readers to be aware of how Bunch came to be involved in solving crimes but I am always aware of the risk of boring those who are already acquainted with her.

Read the rest here

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Frank Westworth takes the Edwards Q&A Challenge #guestblogs #writers #crime

Today the crime writer Frank Westworth is taking the Edwards Q&A challenge.

Frank, tell us a little about yourself

Me? I am almost impossibly old, have earned a fragile but entertaining living from writing since 1988 or so, but have only attempted fiction in the last five years. Before that, I wrote mostly motoring non-fiction, mostly for magazines.

Prior to that new career moment in 1988, I worked mainly and unspectacularly in the chemical industry, and before that I was a gigging musician for far too many years, with a remarkably consistent lack of success…

Peter Mark May : Edwards Q&A Challenge #Q&A #Horrorfiction #Fantasyfiction #writers

Peter Mark May hails from Walton-On-Thames in Surrey and now lives in Hersham.

He is the author of six horror novels and one novella Demon, Kumiho, Inheritance [P. M. May], Dark Waters (novella), Hedge End, AZ: Anno Zombie, Something More Than Night and Forky’s House.

Peter  also writes historical crime under the name Alexander Arrowsmith, his first of a series of novels Pillars of Blood was published 2016/17.

Winter Downs tour : Nelli Rees

The last of today’s tour stops is at the site of jazz diva Nelli Rees who asked me the question “What if Winter Downs was a movie…”

“When Nelli asked me who I would cast for Winter Downs as a film or TV series I have to admit to a slight panic; not least because I can never remember names! After a monster Googling session I have come up with a few possibilities for just the main protags on either side. (The full cast would take months!).

As this is a game of fantasy casting I decided that money would be no object and angled that my imagination could come up with – taken from the great and the good in British acting!

Winter Downs the movie would star: …”
Read more here

Winter Downs Blog Tour : Shamansland

Jessica Rydill has an interview with yours truly over at Shamansland

“Today it gives me great pleasure to interview author Jan Edwards, whose new crime novel, Winter Downs, launched on 3rd June.

How long have you been writing and how did you get started?

Always a hard one to answer without sounding cliched, but I honestly can’t recall when I first started to make up stories to entertain others. My Monday morning ‘news’ at primary school was always complete fabrication. At senior school my languages teacher could never understand why, after three years of Spanish lessons I still could not speak it – despite spending my lessons with head bent over my books scribbling for all I was worth. The reason was, of course, that I was busy writing westerns and noir crimes to entertain my friends and never once looked at my text books.

My first publication ‘credits’ were in a local magazine called W.I.T. produced in Horham, Sussex, with a circulation of about 50! My first ‘proper’ publication was in Visionary Tongue magazine issue 6 – all of which happened in the mid 1990s.”

read more here

Winter Downs Blog Tour last day! : the Quiet Knitterer

Today we have an extract from Winter Downs on the QuietKnitterer  site – enjoy!

 

“The first gunshot flushed a clamour of rooks into a yellowish sky to circle their tribal elms. Rose Courtney glanced at Daphne and wondered if she even noticed them. Since George’s funeral it was so difficult to know whether her younger sibling was wool gathering or had sunk so deep into mourning she simply failed to acknowledge her surroundings.  Understandable, Rose thought, but it’s still frustrating. She had intended this hack across the Downs to lift the spirits. It would be Rose and Daphne – or Bunch and Dodo as their family knew them – riding out just like old times. Except that it was anything but the old times, and even Bunch was beginning to concede that, on this occasion, horse riding might not provide the answer. She tucked rogue strands of dark hair beneath her hat, secured her plaid scarf, and thought how tempting it would be to return home. The sky had grown heavier in the half hour they had been out and fresh snow was beginning to fall in earnest.  The second blast was louder and deeper than the first, scattering rooks and pigeons in a fresh flurry, setting Dodo’s horse into a fidget. Bunch waited without comment for her sister to bring the animal under control.  ‘Pigeons.’ Dodo looked upwards, allowing snowflakes to flutter across her cheeks. ‘Georgie loved them. Cook bakes them with pears and a little port.’ It was the first time Bunch had heard Dodo mention her husband without prompting, and without tears, since the funeral. That’s a good sign, surely? ‘They don’t have a lot of meat on them,’ she said aloud. ‘Hardly worth the cartridge.’ She slapped her Fell pony’s neck, muttering, ‘Easy Perry, steady lad,’ though her mount had barely twitched so much as an ear. Her sister’s mare sidled nervously again so that its hooves slithered on the snow covered slope. ‘Everything all right, Dodo?’ ”

Read on…

Win a copy of Winter Downs #offer #crime

Sign up for my newsletter between now and June 3rd to be in with a chance of winning a signed copy of my forthcoming crime novel Winter Downs! (UK) Offers for e-copies to follow.

Echoes of Scott

‘Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…’

That line has been running through my head all of this morning, and though Scott doubtless had specific thoughts of lust and betrayal at its heart when he first penned Marmion (which is, after all, essentially crime fiction), I’ve always thought it apt for writers in general; and increasingly so as I wade into the murky waters of historical crime fiction.

To my mind, the entire raison d’être of fiction writers is to deceive their audience. Deceive them into believing that which is being laid out before them is ‘true’, at least within itself.  Even the fantasy writer must construct a world that is true to itself within its own bubble, because if that writer does not know what is true or possible in that universe, they will never be able to persuade a reader that the people and places they have created just may exist, somewhere out there, in another time and place.

When Research Gets In The Way!

Research should be two things:

A/ accurate; names, dates etc need to be right!

B/ invisible; your reader should never be ever be treated to a lecture on any one topic, however brief and however much you really want to use that information you spent three weeks reading up on.

Interview with Jan Edwards with Jenny Barber

Today is all about guest blogging over at Jenny Barber’s page!

Jenny Barber

Jan Edwards is a woman of many talents – writer, editor, publisher, bookseller, Reiki master, tarot reader, quilter, motorbike chick, Britain’s first female master locksmith, gardener, cook, potter and sculptor…

So, first let’s talk about Jan the writer. When did you first start writing and what genres draw you.
It always sounds like such a cliché to say I have always written, for as long as I can remember, but I suspect this is quite true with the majority of writers. I amused the family no end by talking in the third person for a week or more when I was around seven years old, because I wanted to see what I would sound like as a book and at secondary school I filled many school notebooks with fiction (mostly during lesson times). I wrote primarily for myself for years and only really started thinking about writing for publication in…

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Plots and Pinnacles

It was just over two years ago that I wrote the draft of a Holmes  pastiche for particular  publisher.   I had hoped to see it out on the bookshelves by now – but we all now how slow some publishing wheels grind. It was a fun exercise, however, and one that set my usual writing lines on a different tangent.

(As  a Guest at Conan Doyle Con at the end of the month I shall have to lean the laurels of my story in the forthcoming Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Moriarty.)